It really depends on what the tool is going to do. Unless the tool is intimately related to Chrome in some way (tab manager, page screenshotter, or something else that needs to access Chrome in some way), and I'm assuming its not, since stand-alone is an option, I'd question why anything needs to be installed at all, even as a Chrome extension.

I'd much rather visit pdf2gif.io (random example) than use something that needs to be installed, when possible.